


Worshipping at Her Altar

by steelplatedhearts



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:38:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steelplatedhearts/pseuds/steelplatedhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has always been him and Her, Her and him. Anything else would be unthinkable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worshipping at Her Altar

**Author's Note:**

> Easing back into fic after being sick for the longest time with this little thing.

When he is young and handsome in Hong Kong, when he has dark hair and all his teeth, he is charming and flirtatious and everyone loves him.

That is, everyone except for the one person who matters.

He does not work for MI6. On paper, he certainly does, but paper is so fragile, so easily ripped in two and tossed to the wind. Loyalty is much more important, and he is not loyal to MI6. He is only loyal to Her.

She is grey and severe then, but he thinks She’s always been grey and severe. Try as he might, he cannot imagine Her as young and beautiful and pink. She has always been made of sharp points and jagged edges.

She would hurt if you embraced Her; each angle and razor-thin line leaving cuts behind until there’s blood running down your face, trickling down your arms. It would be worth it, he thinks. Anything would be worth it.

He finds out Her real name very quickly—it’s his job, after all, to know things. But he never uses it. Naming Her attaches Her to the earth, ties Her down. It’s not right. He doesn’t even use M if he doesn’t have to—only Her and She, always capitalized, always spoken in hushed tones. It’s almost religious.

He is in love, he thinks.

She is decidedly _not_. That’s all right. She at least cares, and that is all he needs. That fact, that caring, grounds him in a way little else can.

*   *   *   *   *  

They capture him, and torture him, and try everything they can to make him talk. And he talks, all right. It just isn’t what they wanted him to say.

“She will come for me,” he says, sneering in their faces. “She will come for me.”

He repeats it like a mantra, day after day, until it feels like his mouth is incapable of forming any other words.

“She will come for me,” he says, and they laugh at him, but he knows that it’s true.

Days pass. Weeks, maybe months--he’s not sure anymore.

He’s not sure of a lot of things anymore.

“She will come for me,” he says, but it sounds hollow, rusted away, and they don’t laugh at him anymore.

Instead, they stare at him with pity in their eyes, witnesses to a desperate worshipper left alone at the altar of an absent god.

“She will come for me,” he mutters, and he doesn’t believe it anymore.

So, with a bite of a cyanide pill, Tiago Rodriguez dies.

*   *   *   *   *  

He is older now, and less handsome, and his hair is unnaturally blond and his teeth are unnaturally perfect, but he can still be charming and flirtatious, and everyone will love him.

He won’t love them, though. It’s about time that the balance of power in love shifted in his favor.

Sévérine loves him, at least at first. He does not love her—she fits too well. She is all soft curves and smooth lines, and she fits just so against him. She is not sharp at all, not pointy or rough or jagged.

An embrace from Sévérine won’t hurt a bit, and he supposes that’s what makes her so deeply unsatisfying.

*   *   *   *   *  

He is decidedly unimpressed by Mr. Bond.

James is the perfect killing machine, brutal and efficient. Not as good as him, of course, but still excellent.

James does not love Her like he does, that’s for sure.

Oh, he protects Her, blindly defends Her, tries to stop him from killing Her, but Silva can sense that the passion is not there.

This is the man She’s chosen to give her affections to, then. Some unintelligent brute who doesn’t love Her as much as he had in Hong Kong.

She would come for James, if the need arose, and that fact sticks in his heart and festers, leaving a raw wound.

*   *   *   *   *  

He doesn’t do well in the plastic cage.

He wants to pace, to smash his way out even though it would go against the entire plan. Damn the plan, anyway.

There’s a nervous energy thrumming right under his skin, whispering to him, telling him to _runrunrun, She doesn’t care, won’t care killHerkillHerkilleryouareakiller_

He firmly ignores that part of himself. The plan _will_ work. If he deviates now, he’ll never be able to talk to Her again.

She rounds the corner, and takes his breath away.

She is just as She was, pointy and grey and dangerous. Time has sanded down Her vicious angles to gently rounded corners, but that doesn’t matter. She is still _Her_.

He straightens his collar like a schoolboy that’s been sent to the principal’s office and waits to hear what she has to say.

She pretends that She doesn’t remember him.

And he believes Her, at first. He tries desperately to communicate with Her, to make Her understand. He rips his teeth out as a last, final measure, and as She’s staring at him in horror (but not indifference, and that’s a step up at least), he stares at Her, and sees the lie in Her eyes.

She’s known exactly who he was the whole time.

He laughs when She leaves, long and loud, because _She remembers him_.

If nothing else, that will be enough.

*   *   *   *   *  

She is scared, near the end.

He wants so desperately to reassure Her, to tell Her that it will be all right, that he’s doing this out of love.

He does not say any of this. She will not understand.

He sees Her wounds, and wants to rip apart the world until whoever left them is rotting in hell—but, again, does not.

Instead, he puts the gun up to their heads, tells Her to set them free. He’s doing this because he loves Her. He tries to communicate this nonverbally, twisting the two of them together.

The embrace hurts, like he always imagined it would.

Bond gets him with a knife in the back. Typical, he thinks with disgust. All the planning and intelligence in the world can’t protect against an idiot with a gun.

I’m sorry, he thinks, thoughts running wild as his vision goes fuzzy. I failed you.

She will not survive with Her wounds for long, so at least he hasn’t abandoned Her totally, left Her with a man who doesn’t love Her enough to kill Her.

But he couldn’t do it himself.

The last thing he thinks, before he spirals into darkness, is Her name. 


End file.
